The Concept of Nature in William Wordsworth's and Robert Frost’s Poetry

 

Robert Frost was one of America's iconic poets, teachers, and lecturers of the 20th century.  His poetry has been appreciated by the youngest child to the heights of a president at President Kennedy's inauguration. President Kennedy described him as, 

"His life and his art summed up the essential qualities of the New England, he loved so much: the fresh delight in Nature, the plainness of speech, the canny wisdom, and deep underlying insight into the human soul."

 

Robert Frost belonged to the turbulent age which saw millions of people perish during the two great wars. Frost's poems can be read and taught to people of all levels because of the simple language he uses. This is one aspect of his work that sets him apart from other modern poets working in the early twentieth century. But despite the use of simple language, Frost often conveys complex ideas in his imagery and settings.

“Nature” in Robert Frost’s poetry

Frost characterized nature as a dominant subject in his poetry. He poses deep love and sympathy towards nature. However, he is not a nature poet in the tradition of Wordsworth or Thomas Hardy. His poems usually begin with an observation of nature and proceed to the connection to the human psychological situation. According to Frost, nature is not only a source of pleasure but also an inspiration for human wisdom. People will get enlightenment from observation, thus nature becomes a central character in his poetry rather than merely a background.

Robert Frost's best poetry is concerned with the drama of man in Nature whereas Wordsworth is generally best when emotionally displaying the panorama of the natural world. Robert Frost himself said in 1952, 

"I guess I'm not a Nature poet. I have only written two poems without a human being in them."

As a critic says,

"There is almost nothing of the mystic in Frost. He does not seek in Nature either a sense of oneness with all created things or union with God. There is nothing platonic in his view of life because it is a foreshadowing of something else."

Robert Frost sees no pervading spirit in the natural impersonal and unfeeling. Though Nature watches man, she takes no account of him. Robert Frost treats Nature both as a comfort and a menace. As a critic says, 

"Frost does not formulate a theory of Nature or of man's relationship with Nature. However, it seems that Frost believes that man should live in harmony with Nature and not go against Nature or natural processes."

In "Theory Of Literature" (third edition, 1956), Austen Warren makes a comment on Robert Frost's natural symbolism to show that in most of his poems, there are some natural symbols that are quite difficult for readers to grasp and it is for his natural symbolism that he has drawn a wide audience all over the world. It is true that Frost is keen on the use of natural symbolism, for, nature, in the eyes of Robert Frost, according to Robert D. Richardson, is symbolic of spirit. That is to say, when he writes something about nature, he doesn't describe nature purely, instead, he uses natural objects or events as symbols to reveal or express something more profound. George. W. Nitchie, in "The World of Nature" collected in "Human Values in the Poetry of Robert Frost", comments on Frost's view of nature, observing that Frost's values and view of nature are intimately related.

Frost does not aim at presenting natural scenery and charming rural life. His poems are concerned with human psychological conditions. He once said, 

"Some people call me a poet for nature because of the natural setting. But I'm not a poet of nature; there is also something else in my poems."

He uses nature as a background to illustrate people's psychological struggle with everyday life. His poems usually begin with an observation of nature and proceed to the connection to human situations, such as loneliness, helplessness, confusion, and indifferent human relationship.

Rural scenes and landscapes, homely farmers, and the natural world are used to illustrate a psychological struggle with everyday experience met with courage, will, and purpose in the context of Frost's life and personal psychology. His attitude is stoical, honest, and accepting. He uses nature as a background. He usually begins a poem with an observation of something in nature and then moves toward a connection to some human situation or concern. Frost is neither a transcendentalist nor a pantheist.

Robert Frost saw nature as an alien force capable of destroying man, but he also saw man's struggle with nature as a heroic battle. As told in his poem "Our hold on the planet",

 

There is much in nature against us. But we forget

Take nature altogether since time began,

Including human nature, in peace and war,

And it must be a little more in favor of man,

Say a fraction of one percent at the very least,

Or our number living wouldn't be steadily more,

Our hold on the planet wouldn't have so increased.

 

One point of view on which all critics agree is Frost's minute observation and accurate depiction of the different aspects of nature in his poems. For illustration, these lines from "Stopping by woods on a Snowy Evening" may be quoted as,

 

"The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,

But I have promises to keep."

 

These lines depict not only the beauty and the mystery of the snow-filled woods which hold the poet almost spellbound but also describe the helplessness of the poet who has no time because of his social commitments. Thus, the beauty of nature and the obligations of human life are treated by Frost as two aspects of the poet's whole experience in these lines.

Frost is probably a realist who abstruse the things around him and nature as they are and describes them as such. That is why nature changes its character from poem to poem in his poetry.

In "Two Tramps in Mud Time", on one hand, he shows New England poised between cold and warmth, winter and spring, on the other hand, he does not miss to show the turmoil and storm brewing under the apparently beautiful calm of nature. Therefore, he interrupts his genial description of the April weather to warm.

 

"Be glad of water, but don't forget

The lurking frost in the earth beneath

That will steal forth after the sun is set

And snow on the water is crystal teeth."

 

Frost's pastoral element is dominant in Frost's poetry. That is why he is considered a poet of pastures and plains, mountains and rivers, woods and gardens, groves and Bowers, fruits and flowers, seeds and birds as he was a farmer. Hence, nature was his constant companion. But what is noticeable in his poetry is that even in the poems such as "Pastures", "Birches", "Stopping by woods on a Snowy Evening", "West Running Brook", "After Apple Picking", "An old man's winter night" and "Mending Wall" it is the human factor which is predominant and nature is an integral part of the themes of the poems. For worries and disappointments in life make life miserable but the pet still clings to it because he loves the earth.

Frost unlike Wordsworth is not a nature mystic. He doesn't see any affinity between nature and man nor does he find any spirit or power pervading it. Nor does he find any healing power in it which can cure the ills of society and man. For him, nature is alien to man.

Frost's attitude to nature reflects the spirit of the present age whose attitude to nature, like all other things, is scientific and realistic. This is why he has not formulated any philosophy about nature nor do his poems display the rare exalted moments which are displayed in the poems of the romantic age, particularly in those of Wordsworth. Frost's poems describe simply his daily and common experiences.

The imagery of Frost's poems is also drawn upon the objects of nature.

"Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning" (Birches)

"And life is too much like a pathless wood" (Birches)

"The world of hoary grass" (After Apple Picking)

"A leaping tongue of bloom" (The tuft of flower)

"His long scythe whispering to the ground" (The Tuft of Flower)

 

These are some of the images which have locked his poem with beauty and sense. Though Frost is philosophical and not didactic yet his poems usually convey the wisdom of his experience which may be termed as moral.

Thus, the panorama of nature presented in Frost's poems not only offers a feast of beauty to the view of the reader but also provides him an awareness of life. His sarcastic qualities find full expression in the description of the scenes of nature. In light of these views, Frost may safely be considered a poet who gave an entirely new concept of nature and is one of the great poets of nature.

“Nature” in Wordsworth’s Poetry:

Wordsworth stands supreme as a poet of nature. Nature comes to occupy in his poems a separate or independent status and is not treated in a casual or passing manner as by poets before him. Wordsworth had a full-fledged philosophy, a new and original view of Nature. On the other hand, Robert Frost uses nature to express his views on human lives as well as to make his poetry interesting and easy to imagine in our minds through the detail he supplies.

As a romantic, Wordsworth conceived nature as a living personality. He established a cordial relationship between nature and human life. Wordsworth connects human life with nature in "I wandered lonely as a cloud" also known as "Daffodils". Here, "Daffodils" represent the impermanence of human life. Once the poet accompanied a jocund company with numerous daffodils but that pleasant moment does not accompany him all time. Wordsworth visualizes them only in his vacant and pensive mood. He says,

"For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in a pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils." (19-24)

Wordsworth believed that the company of daffodils gives joy to the human heart and he looked upon nature as exercising a healing influence on sorrow-stricken hearts. Wordsworth takes pleasure in contact with nature and purifies his mind, 'in lonely rooms, and mid the din of towns and cities,' with the memory of nature. Moreover, nature has not become a landscape to a blind man's eye' to him. It indicates that the eyes of the city people are blind because they can not get anything from nature.

He also believed that we can learn more about a man and of moral evil and good from nature than from all the philosophies. In his eyes, "Nature is a teacher whose wisdom we can learn, and without which any human life is vain and incomplete."

Above all, Wordsworth emphasized the moral influence of nature. He spiritualized nature and regarded her as a great moral teacher, as the best mother, guardian, and nurse of man. He believed that between man and nature, there is mutual consciousness, spiritual communion, or mystic intercourse. As he says in his poem, "Tintern Abbey",

"The anchor of my purest thought, the nurse

The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul

Of all my moral being." (110-112)

In another poem, "Immortality Ode", he tells us that as a boy his love for nature was a thoughtless passion but as he grew up, the objects of nature took a sober coloring from his eyes and gave rise to profound thoughts in his mind.

"To me, the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." (207-208)

A Comparative Study:

For Wordsworth, poetry is the outcome of personal, spiritual, or mystical experiences. In the poetry of his great period, Wordsworth's theme is the spirit eminent in nature and man. The philosophic ideas through which he seeks to justify this concept of spirit are diverse and combined in a variety of ways, the emphasis shifting from one poem to another. He expresses this union most often by suggesting a blending of thought and landscape and portraying the subtle affinities between the natural scene and the moral sentiments.

The vague suggestiveness of Wordsworth's terms is the medium in which thought and object merge. As Wordsworth put it, "where things are lost in each other, and limits vanish, and aspirations are raised."

On the contrary, the contrast between man and nature is the central theme of Frost's nature poetry. Frost views nature as essentially alien. Instead of exploring the margins where emotions and appearances blend, he looks at heart across an impassable gulf. What he sees on the other side is the image of a hard, impersonal reality. Man's physical needs, the dangers facing him, the realities of birth and death, and the limits of his ability to know and to act are shown in stark outline by the indifference and inaccessibility of the physical world in which he must live.

As a romantic poet, Wordsworth uses nature in his poetry as a central theme, focusing on the beauty of nature that can heal his pain and give him pleasure. On the other hand, Frost's vision is to present a human being as the central theme, and nature comes as a background. Poetry, to Frost, was a record of personal experience. To Wordsworth, it was "the image of man and nature. Its object is truth, not individual and local but general and operative; not standing external testimony but carried alive into the heart of passion". Thus, Wordsworth's poetry is a direct revelation of reality, an authentic version of human phenomenon. To Wordsworth, nature was the source of learning, ideas, power, and values; nature was the fountain of inspiration and solace in times of mental agony. Nature appears to him as his nurse, guardian, and teacher. In times of despair and suffering, nature acts as the spring of moral strength and confidence for psychic survival. Wordsworth is a poet of thought and meditation whereas Frost's poems are about activity, work, obligation, and duty. Frost is pragmatic, worldly, and anti-romantic. He sees nature as a symbol of man's relation to the world. Though he writes about a forest or a wildflower, his real subject is humanity. The remoteness of nature reveals the tragedy of man's isolation and his weakness in the face of vast, impersonal forces. In this respect, nature becomes a means of portraying the heroic. There is a fundamental ambiguity of feeling in Frost's view of nature that is totally absent in Wordsworth.

No matter whether the English Romantic William Wordsworth had ever dreamt of a future personality like Robert Frost; it doesn't even matter if the modern American Robert Frost had been influenced by Wordsworth, but it really matters to bring forward into the discussion that they both have definitely used their talent in using the common subject "Nature" along with its every possible small details to have a mind-blowing effect among the generation of readers to consider the thematic values of the different poems of these two legendary poets. Irrespective of any color or cast, they both have advocated for humanity and beauty through their poetic eyes and perceptive genius while uploading their subjective assessment of Nature, and that is exactly what makes them individually unique.